ACTION, VISTA Division Region IV Memorandum from James D. Lay, Chief of Resource Development and Training, and B. I. Cheney, Jr., Acting Regional Director, to VISTA Supervisors.
Correspondence from Jane Cornell, Administrative Officer for VISTA, to James Clyburn, Executive Director for the South Carolina Commission for Farm Workers, regarding VISTA grant application details.
Voter Education Newsletter entitled, "V.E.P. News," Volume 1, Number 7, discussing various news items relating to voting rights as pertaining to African American voters and political candidates.
Correspondence from Charles J. Baron and Frank E. Williams, Deputy Director for Programs and Training and Regional Director for ACTION - Region IV respectively, to all VISTA sponsors regarding revised instructions for re-enrollment and extension of VISTA volunteers.
Cator Sparks (pronouns: he/him), white board president of LGBTQ youth organization We Are Family, discusses his life as a gay man and his volunteer and professional work. He describes growing up in a liberal family in Atlanta, Georgia, and his difficulties and successes in high school. Sparks attended the College of Charleston in the early 1990s and speaks of coming out in Charleston into an exciting and accepting environment, then detailing his experiences in the rave scene. Along with rave venues, he describes gay bars including Treehouse, A.C.'s, and The Arcade. He discusses his volunteer work with neighborhood associations in the Cannonborough-Elliotborough neighborhood in Charleston and Harlem in New York City. Sparks performed in drag in Atlanta as Spectra Gramm, one of his performances during the Olympics being televised in France, where he soon went to study abroad. Back in Atlanta, he enrolled in American College, finishing his degree in fashion marketing in London. It was there he discovered dandyism, and he speaks of his conversion to it from rave fashion, defining what dandyism means to him, the effect it had on his life, and how it can educate others. He emphasizes how he values working with LGBTQ youth and his experiences volunteering with the Harvey Milk High School in New York City and with We Are Family in Charleston. Sparks describes the impact the 2016 Presidential election had on him, prompting his social action and recaps his professional life, including a description of working in Jeffrey, a high-end New York shoe store started by Jeffrey Kalinksy of Charleston, his freelance writing and his future plans of becoming a life coach. Photograph credited to Carolina Knopf.